Hemispherical
by MichyGeary
Summary: Barney Stinson and Billy "Horrible" trade places and wreck havoc on each other's lives. A Dr. Horrible/How I Met Your Mother Crossover. Please read/review! Barney/Robin. Billy/Penny. Barney/Penny. Billy/Robin.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** This chapter has a heavy focus on Dr. Horrible. I promise it will level out as the chapters roll on. As for the setting, it takes place shortly after Dr. Horrible's failed heist with the freeze ray. However, in this story, Dr. Horrible does not need to pull off a murder to get accepted to the E.L.E. He just needs to prove himself to the League. All major characters are alive. Please review!

---

The doctor wasn't getting anywhere. This was the sixth time in eight days Hammer had interfered with Billy's progress with Penny. Just when he thought he was getting somewhere with her, that toolbag would show up and abscond with her attention. Laundry days used to be their alone time. Now Hammer would show up to help. His "help" involved sitting on an empty machine, retelling tales of his greatest victories, and subtly criticizing how much detergent Billy was using. Today he had exacerbated the humiliation by pointing out how Billy should never wash synthetic fibers with natural fibers, shortly before surreptitiously tripping Billy on his way to the drier. Penny knelt down in an offer to help, but Hammer insisted on showing off his role as the altruistic Samaritan.

"What a cock," Billy muttered as he slumped down into the chair in front of his computer. He laced his fingers and pushed his palms out in front of him, cracking his knuckles in fluid motion. He pulled on his gloves, completing his attire, straightened the webcam on his monitor, and took a deep breath.

"Well," he began as he hit _record_, "it's been a two weeks since I first got my letter from the League, and I've yet to pull off a successful heist." He sighed. "You know, being an evil scientist isn't as easy as it looks," he said knowingly, looking his audience square. "I mean, you think being good at math is all it takes? Tssh. No. It takes a lot of..." He trailed off. "It's just not easy, okay? Bad Horse should cut me some slack. I mean, whatever happened to 'it's the thought that counts'?" He paused and shook his head. Then he raised an index finger and shook it at the camera. "But don't you worry, because I've got a plan. And, before you ask, to avoid any future situations like last week's occasion at the mayor's dedication, I've constructed a sub-plan. It's a little more complicated than some of my projects so far have been, _but_ if I can pull it off, I'll be sipping tea with Bad Horse by Christmas." He grinned and demonstrated his work-in-progress memorable laugh. "Without giving too much away, it involves a very complicated machine that I've been working on for weeks which will materialize for me a doppelganger." He cocked his head to the side, examining the wooden frame around his door. "Or destroy the very fabric of time and space." After a contemplative beat, he returned his gaze to the screen. "Oh well, I'm sure it'll go off without a hitch. I'm going to test it out tonight. So, if all goes according to plan, by this time tomorrow I will have a stunt double for when I—"

Before he could finish, his front door opened and Moist came in, carrying a very soggy grocery bag. "Hey Doc."

"Dude, you have got to stop doing that," Billy said as he paused the recording on his computer. "I'm never going to upload these blog entries."

"Sorry," Moist said. "I can leave and come back later?"

"No, no," Billy said helping him with the groceries. "Sorry I snapped. I'm really nervous about this Genetic Vortex."

"You gonna give it a whirl tonight?" Moist asked looking eager.

"Don't get too excited," Billy said. "I'm going to need you to clear the room when I do. If something goes wrong, I don't want to take you down with me."

"Nah, I'm sure it'll be fine," Moist said. "You've been working on that thing for, like, a month."

"Yeah, well you remember what happened with the first run of the Transmatter Ray."

"Yeah..."

"And the first run of the Freeze Ray."

"Yeah..."

Billy placed the bag on the counter and dug out two rolls of very squelchy paper towels, a soppy cardboard box of crackers, a bag of red grapes, a bottle of easy-cheese, and a bag of Funions.

"Healthy diets are for heroes," Moist said derogatorily.

"Where's the frozen yogurt?" Billy muttered anxiously, feeling the muscles around his eyes tremor.

"Come on, man," Moist said. "Isn't that a bit too cliché for junk food?"

"No, you don't understand," he said frantically. "I need a hefty supply of frozen yogurt."

"For the Vortex?" Moist asked, looking confused.

"No," Billy said, giving his sidekick a hybrid look of panic and embarrassment. "For Penny."

Moist offered to go back out for a jumbo pack of frozen yogurt while the doctor tested out his new machine.

---

Billy paced around the Vortex, now dressed in loose plainclothes and scrutinizing every last detail of the model. "All right," he whispered to himself. "Better get this over with." After tinkering with what seemed like hundreds of buttons and knobs, he stepped inside what looked like a spherical capsule, just barely large enough to fit him if he crouched down. He pressed his thumb to a screen in front of him and waited twenty seconds for it to read his DNA. A soft hum begun to whir from the wires until it escalated to a dull high pitch. Billy felt a numbness bite his toes and spread quickly up his body until he lost consciousness. The capsule shook vigorously, and a flash of amber light, which would have blinded Moist had he stuck around, radiated through the glass walls. Suddenly, the machine stabilized and the whirring drooped into silence.

Barney Stinson stumbled out of the capsule and pushed a sweaty palm into his forehead. "Where the hell am I?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** I've got lots of stuff planned for this story, so please subscribe and leave comments if you like the story. :D Thank you!

---

"Three lawsuits," Barney said knocking back the rest of his scotch. He'd ordered it three minutes ago and it was already throbbing through his veins. "Three."

"And they're bad, too," Marshall told the group as Lily hugged his arm sympathetically.

"Well, you're a great lawyer, baby," she said confidently, rubbing his shoulder.

Barney slammed his glass down on the table, and Wendy arrived within minutes with a fresh one. He indulged eagerly without even a thanks. "Now I have to fly to Ratchaburi next week to face a throng of angry Thai men," Barney growled.

"That sucks," Robin said as she nudged him gently with her shoulder. "Anything we can do to help?"

Barney looked up at her, a sad look in his eyes. "Yes, there is," he said softly.

"Okay, what do you need?" Robin asked, almost fearful of the answer.

Barney jumped up from the booth and snapped his fingers. "Scherbatsky, wingman."

"What?" she choked through an incredulous laugh.

"Come on, I've got a great plan, but it requires the assistance of a woman."

Robin shot Ted a desperate look, but he merely laughed. "Sorry, you're on your own."

Robin groaned and begrudgingly followed Barney over to the bar. They sat down at the corner where they could discuss the plan in secret.

"All right, Scherbatsky, game time," Barney began in a low tone. "So I'm thinking, if I want to forget about this whole 'being sued from three different angles thing,' I think I need to counter it with... getting _laid_ at three different angles," he said with an arrogant grin and a slow nod of the head. "Yeah." Robin rolled her eyes. "I'm looking at..." Barney threw a cursory glance over his shoulder and then turned back to Robin, "table number six."

Robin looked over his shoulder and saw three young ladies who seemed to be having a contest over who could finish her beer first. "They seem charming," she said dully.

"Boy, can that one in the middle can swallow."

"Oh, gross!" Robin shrieked. Barney's snickering suddenly turned into an anguished groan. "What's the matter?" Robin asked.

"I don't know," he said looking down at his shoes. "I got this sharp pain in my – _ah!_ – toes all of a sudden," he grumbled through gritted teeth. Robin couldn't help but laugh.

"Is this part of the plan?" she teased. "Are they supposed to take you home and nurse you?"

"I'll be right back," Barney muttered, pushing off of his stool and stumbling out the back door into the alley. He felt the pain crawling up from his toes until his whole body felt numb. He dropped to his knees and doubled over; then a feeling, much like when he got hit by the bus, struck his skull, and he blacked out. When he came to, he was in the same crouched position but inside of what felt like an adult-sized womb. A door by his elbow opened with a hiss, and he staggered out, driving a hand into his throbbing forehead.

"Where the hell am I?"

---

Billy slowly opened his eyes, feeling a cold from the pavement press into the back of his head. He sat up slowly and stumbled to his feet, looking around. "Where the hell am I?" he whispered. He shook his head. This wasn't supposed to happen. He was supposed to crawl out of the capsule, followed shortly thereafter by an identical copy of himself. He wasn't supposed to actually go anywhere. Unless...

"Oh god," he said, looking around at the empty space around him. "Did I blow up my house?"

Still feeling dazed, he headed for the door in front of him, which seemed to lead to the inside of a Pub. This was definitely no bar in his neighborhood. The first woman he saw was sitting at the bar with her back turned. He decided to approach her for information.

"Excuse me?" he said tapping her lightly on the shoulder. The woman turned around, her eyes wide.

"Barney?" she spluttered. "What happened to your suit?"

"I'm... not wearing a suit?" Billy said, confused. "And my name is Billy, not Barney."

"Ohhh," the woman said slowly, as though reaching some epiphany. "Role playing? That's new."

"Huh?" he asked. This woman must have been drunk out of her mind; she was sitting in front of two scotches. Then again, she seemed perfectly sober.

"Or... not so new," she said with a furrowed brow. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised."

"Uh, okay," Billy said. "Listen, I need to know –"

"So, are you going to tell me about your plan or what?" the woman asked. Billy's spine straightened, and he felt a nervous spasm rise to his eyelids.

"Plan, what plan?" he asked nervously. "How do you know about my plan?"

"Uh, because you told me?" she said. "What the hell's the matter with you, Barney?"

"Billy," he grumbled, feeling increasingly annoyed with this woman.

"Oh, right. _Billy_," she whispered with a wink.

Just then, a very tall man approached them with a short dark-haired girl draped over his arm. "Hey guys," the man said, "Lily and I are feeling pretty tired, and I still have those documents to look over tonight." He gave Billy a once over. "What happened to your suit?"

"I'm not wearing a suit!" Billy cried.

"Yeah, I know," the man said. "You were just wearing one five minutes ago. Could it be that Barney Stinson is a master of disguises?" he said mysteriously, stroking his chin with the tips of his thumb and forefinger.

"Come on, baby, we'd better get going," the girl named Lily said tugging on... (Billy noticed wedding rings)... her husband's arm.

"Yeah, I have to go in early tomorrow to processes some of this paperwork from the lawsuits," he said to Billy as if that was supposed to make sense. "Night Barney, night Robin," he said as he and his wife headed out the door.

"Good night!" the woman named Robin called after them. She turned back to Billy. "So let's get to work."

Billy shook his head. "Look, I've got to go," he said vaguely, stuffing his hands shyly in his hoodie pockets and heading for the front door. Robin watched him curiously and then headed towards a table where a man was sitting.

"What's up with Barney?" he asked.

"I don't know," Robin said. "I guess these lawsuits are really messing with his head."

---

Billy walked a good two or three blocks before realizing he didn't recognize where he was at all. He decided to wave a taxi to get back home. "Echo Park Avenue, please," he said as he got into the cab.

"Really?" the cab driver asked. "That would be quite a pricey trip."

"Why, how far is it?" Billy asked.

"California," the driver said.

"Well, obviously," Billy said. "Echo Park Avenue is just around the corner from where I live. Why, where are we now?"

The driver turned around in his seat. "This is New York."

---

Barney stood up straight and smoothed out his now-wrinkled suit. Looking around, he seemed to be in some strange sort of amateur laboratory, possibly belonging to a high school or college science student. Still reeling, he examined the machine from which he just stumbled out. "Genetic Vortex?" he said to himself, reading a label on the side that seemed to be made out of duct-tape and sharpie. Before he had much of a chance to look around the room more, the front door opened and in came a sweaty looking kid.

"Got eight packs of 12," he said as he came into the room carrying a grocery bag. "Hey, nice suit."

"Thanks," Barney said with a proud smile. "It's a Giorgio Armani, tailored specifically for yours truly."

"So how'd the experiment go, doc?" he asked, unpacking what seemed to be frozen yogurt into the fridge.

"Doc?" Barney asked. He eyed the kid closely; he just bought almost a hundred tubs of frozen yogurt, he mistook Barney for a doctor, and he was clammy as hell. He was obviously tripping balls. Barney figured it would just be easier to play along. "Sure, it worked like a charm," he said, holding back a laugh.

"I figured it would," the boy said. "See, the freeze ray thing was just a fluke."

_Freeze ray?_, Barney thought. Whatever this kid was hitting must have been new-age and strong, but it gave him a great idea. "Listen, I'd love to stick around," he said, "but I got something I've got to take care of. Where's the nearest bar?"

"You're kidding, right?" the sweaty kid asked. "You feeling all right?"

"Yeah, sure," Barney said. "Nearest bar?"

"I guess that would be The Short Stop, just down the street."

"Thanks," Barney said, clapping a hand to the kid's shoulder and giving him a once over, trying to come up with a suitable nickname; he grinned thinking of his friend Lily, "Moist."


	3. Chapter 3

After confirming his worst fear that the vortex had actually transported him elsewhere, Billy asked the cab driver to take him to the nearest library.

"Barney Stinson," he said quietly to himself as his fingers typed the name furiously into the search engine. The search turned up quite a few hundred hits, most of which linked to business webpages that belonged to a company called UltraCell. After a few hours of meticulous investigation, Billy had procured records of Barney Stinson's living arrangements since the age of eighteen, the address of his last known location, the address of the UltraCell business building nearest to the apartment, and the most important piece of the puzzle: a criminal record which contained mug shots of the man himself.

"I knew it," Billy said under his breath. He searched his pockets frantically for his cell phone; then he remembered that he had taken it out of his pockets for when he stepped into the machine. Fortunate to have some change left over from his cab ride, Billy left the library for the nearest payphone. He dialed the only number he knew by heart.

"Moist," he said when he got the voicemail, "you're probably not picking up because I'm calling from an unregistered number. Listen, I may have done something... kind of bad. I don't have my cell on me, so you can't call me back, but I'm going to call you tomorrow. When you see a 212 number, please pick up. It's important."

He hung up the phone. It was late, and he had forty-two dollars in his pocket. After wandering around for almost two hours, he found a hostel that was cheap enough, but it terrified him to stay there. Still, it was either that or sleep out on a bench in Central –

He laughed. He laughed not his up-and-coming evil trademark laugh, but a short, mellow, self-pitying laugh. He was homeless. After all that teasing he did of Penny's efforts to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and after all that claim that it was a worthless cause, here he was, lost somewhere in New York, with no place to stay. He would give anything to be with her right now, to be one of her homeless, under her care, her caring hands...

He bumped the back of his ear with his shoulder and braced himself for whatever terrors he might find inside the New York Loft Hostel.

---

"So I can't stay very long," Barney said to a blonde girl at the bar. He had been laying down groundwork all night to lead up to this very mysterious conversation, and she was rapt with fascination. "I've got to get home to work on this... project."

The blonde perked up. "Ooh, tell me, tell me!"

Barney looked up at her, twirling his glass in the air before him. He dropped his jaw slightly as though he were about to tell her. "Nah, I shouldn't," he said after a moment. "It's top secret."

"Ooh, I won't tell anyone, I promise," she whispered, bouncing a bit in her seat. Barney noticed. He smiled.

"All right," he said leaning in. "You see, Melanie, I'm something of a clandestine evil scientist," he said enigmatically. "I'm working on this thing called a Genetic Vortex. It's very complicated. Lots of math, lots of science, you know."

"Wow," she breathed. "Can I see?"

Barney paused again for the dramatic element. "Why not?" he said, and her eyes lit up. "My laboratory isn't far from here," he said, making sure to pronounce it _le-boor-a-tory_. "But I must say, there is a no-touching-the-equipment rule. Well, when it comes to my _lab_ equipment," he winked. Her face flushed, and she clung to his elbow all the way out of the bar.

When they got back to the house, the sweaty-looking kid he'd dubbed "Moist" was not there. Melanie was giving herself a tour of the place, admiring the test tubes with mysterious simmering liquids, the whiteboard with complicated math equations augmented by amateur diagrams and illustrations, the crank that lowered a wheel of peculiar gadgets over what looked like an operating table, the large silver ray-gun that resembled a satellite dish, various pairs of white gloves and bronze safety goggles, and asking Barney all along what each of them were. Being just as foreign to this place as she, Barney simply made up facts and descriptions off the top of his head, inspired by the wild imagination of the kid on the acid trip. As long as he spoke with an impressive confidence, she gobbled up every word.

"I knew magic existed," she said dreamily, reaching out and almost touching the ray-gun but thinking better of it a second later.

"It's not magic," Barney said, a little insulted that she would confuse the two. "It's science."

"I love it," she whispered, flopping down into an abnormally large armchair.

"Would you like some frozen yogurt?" Barney offered as he headed for the fridge. "I've got plenty."

"Sure," she said, massaging the arm of the chair admiringly. "Wow. So how long have you been doing this?"

"Since my dad died six years ago," Barney said, handing her a frozen yogurt and joining her on the large chair. "He ran the family business, and I wasn't supposed to take over for much longer." He paused and looked up thoughtfully. "I always wanted to be an architect."

"Oh, that's so hot," Melanie said as Barney spooned a small helping of frozen yogurt into his mouth.

"I know," Barney whispered confidently. "Anyway, like I said, I was still learning all the secrets when..." his voice started to crack, "Dad was trying out his new death ray and it backfired." He sobbed dramatically, waving his frozen yogurt. "I'm sorry."

"That's so sad," Melanie said. "You poor thing, come here..."

The frozen yogurts lay forgotten and melting on the otherwise pristine hardwood floors.

---

Billy lay flat on his back, staring at the water damage stain on the ceiling and trying to ignore the sound of four other residents snoring and two having... well, relations.

_"See, later on,"_ a voice in Billy's head was echoing, _"I'm gonna take little Penny back to my place. Show her the command center...hammer cycle..."_

Billy flipped over onto his stomach, driving his head into the caseless pillow. It smelled like old cigars and the body odor of a failing geriatric. He needed to come up with a better idea for lodgings, but it was so hard to concentrate when his every thought was interrupted by the infuriating voi–

_"See, Penny's giving it up, she's giving it up hard..._"

He punched the mattress, and his bunkmate below grumbled cursewords in Sweedish. During the course of the night, five other guests stumbled into the room at various hours from various wild nights. Billy finally fell asleep before dawn broke, but only after an idea curled his lips.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note: **Someone in the reviews correctly guessed where I was going with this, LOL. I promise I already had it planned out! This one's a bit long, but it didn't feel right to cut it off in the middle of an important stretch. If you think Barney's being a little out of character at the end, I promise to explain myself in the next chapter! :)

--

Billy was more than happy to check out by 10 AM the following morning. He passed on the continental pancake breakfast – he had a better idea.

What little money he had left bought him a cab that took him close enough to Barney Stinson's apartment. He paid the cab driver and walked the remaining eight blocks to the location he'd written down at the library. He had an easy time convincing the superintendent to let him in, claiming to be Barney and insisting that he must have left his keys at MacLaren's. He learned from that conversation that Barney must frequent MacLaren's a lot because he didn't seem surprised that Barney would be at a bar twenty-five minutes away. He was, however, surprised that Billy wasn't wearing a suit.

"What is with this guy and suits?" he asked himself once the super left. After taking off his hoodie and throwing it onto the couch, Billy decided to take a look around. The apartment felt very empty despite the fact that it had a lot of furniture. He gave himself a tour – no food in the fridge, hardly any cosmetics in the bathroom (and was that a spring-loaded toilet seat?), two bedrooms (one full of suits – seriously, what was up with the suits?), a hallway full of porn, and a life-sized Storm Trooper by the back window.

He sat down at the laptop in the bedroom; the only program currently running was a browser with what appeared to be a blog. Billy smiled to himself – this guy blogged too?

"Yeah, well, Barney Stinson, your blog isn't video, is it?" Billy sneered at the computer screen as he scrolled through the entries, looking for any information that would help him. Most of the blogs were about women and his latest conquests and "being awesome," as he frequently said. Billy hadn't found any reason so far to like this guy. It seemed that all he ever talked about was screwing different women. He was beginning to think that Barney seemed like the polar opposite of Billy himself, who couldn't even bring himself to talk to _one_ particular woman.

Then he came across something a little different. He was halfway through reading what turned out to be a private-locked entry before he realized what it was.

_-  
September 23, 2008_

_Telling Lily how I felt about Robin was a huge mistake. I mean, what was I thinking? She can't keep a secret. Moreover, she's a woman, which means she can't mind her own damn business. Last night she tricked me into a date with Robin. It was awkward and nerve-wracking at first, but I did learn a little more about her. Despite the fact that her father raised her like a son, she did most of the cooking growing up. She once dyed her hair pink as an act of teenage rebellion; when that didn't work, that's when she turned blonde and went into modeling, which eventually led to her Robin Sparkles career. She has an irrational fear of going blind. She takes her shoes off when she goes to the movie theatre. She loves the smell of gasoline. She has the chance to go for this incredible job, and I gave her the confidence to go for it. _

_But it doesn't matter. This whole thing is just a phase. I just need to get back in the game. That's why last night I took home this really dim chick from the bar. Talk about easy; even pretending to be on a sports team seemed impressed her, even though she clearly didn't know the first thing about them. Lily seems to think I'm just afraid of getting hurt in a real relationship, but what does she know? She's been with Marshall for twelve years. They think life is all about love. They're only kidding themselves.  
-_

"_Wow_," Billy said to himself once he'd finished reading. That blog entry was so different from the others, he didn't know what to make of it. It wasn't just about "scoring" or "being awesome." Did he have genuine feelings for one girl in particular? "Wait," he said to himself, scrolling back over the entry. "Robin? That was the name of the woman at the bar," he said, remembering that the man had called her that. Barney was in love with her? According to this blog, he was on a _date_ with her, and took some other girl home that night. "What is this guy playing at?"

Since there was no food in the entire house, and Billy was starving, he decided to order a pizza online for delivery using the bank account information Barney had saved on his computer. "It's about taking money," Billy smiled as he happily clicked the "confirm order" button. With that set, he picked up the phone on the desk and dialed his friend again. This time he got through.

"Hello?"

"Moist! Hey," Billy said. "Man, am I glad to talk to you. Listen, I may have done something bad."

"What's going on?" Moist said. "You were acting really strange last night."

"That wasn't me," Billy said. "All right, look, I may have cut some corners in designing the Genetic Vortex."

"What corners?"

"Just some minor coding details," he said, trying to play down the severity. "Long story short, it didn't create a clone."

"Well, then what happened?" Moist asked, now sounding concerned.

Billy sighed, hating to admit to his own faults in such explicit detail. But Moist had to know what was going on. "It must have searched a global database and found someone whose DNA most closely matched my own. Sort of like DKMS or finding a bone marrow match."

"What are you saying?" Moist asked after a beat. "You have a twin or something?"

"No, not biologically anyway," Billy said. "Just... someone who shares my basic genetic makeup and looks freakishly like me."

"Well, I've heard that everyone has a look-alike somewhere," Moist said. "But I never believed it."

"Oh, believe it," Billy sighed. "Because right now, I'm sitting in this guy's New York apartment."

---

Barney told Melanie the next morning that he would meet her downtown for some hippie homeless shelter dedication. She had been nattering on all night about how her best friend Penny had been working tirelessly to blah blah blah, and Barney just needed a quick way to get her out of the house. He had no intention of actually going. _Still_, he thought, as he pulled a half-eaten truffle cake out of the fridge, _there will probably be a lot of women there who would drop trou for any guy who shared her same sensibilities_. He considered checking out the scene, but he figured he should probably get home soon. He was already mentally writing the blog in his head as he gripped a fork with his whole fist and stabbed at the cake, shoveling it into his mouth.

_-  
__What a night! I was so upset about work that I went straight to the bar and knocked back six drinks before my friends even ordered theirs. I drank so much that I passed out in the alley behind the bar and woke up somewhere I didn't recognize. Wouldn't be the first time. But this place was like walking into a nightmare, if acid trips could have nightmares. The kid who lived there was so doped, he didn't find my presence there at all alarming. And the Barnacle isn't one to pass up a great opportunity. I used this bizarre place to nail some chick, where ever the hell I was. I just took a cab home.  
-_

"Good idea," he mumbled to himself through a mouthful of frosting. Leaving the cake out on the table, he grabbed his suit jacket from the back of the comically large chair (where he'd folded it neatly before copulation the night before) and threw it on as he headed for the door, fully intending to just hop in a cab and give his address. But right when he got to the door...

---

"You're in New York?" Moist asked. "This is crazy. How did you figure all this out? Were you expecting it?"

"I had my doubts," Billy admitted. "But it all became clear when I got here."

Billy relayed the entire story to his friend, starting with the strange people at the bar who called him Barney Stinson, the cab driver who told him he was in New York, and all the subsequent information he'd attained on the man at the library.

"What sealed the deal was when I found a criminal record on the guy, mug shots and all – looks just like me. That's when I knew."

"Criminal record?" Moist said, sounding slightly impressed. "What did he do?"

"Urinated in public," Billy said, and he couldn't help but laugh. "Don't know why I never thought of that."

"Yeah, man," Moist said, sharing the mirth. "You'd be in the League by now if you'd done something that badass."

"It doesn't end there," Billy said. "I got into his apartment this morning. Just pretended I was him and told the super I lost my keys."

"Sure."

"This guy is kind of a douche," Billy said, scrolling back over some of the entries. "He keeps this blog –"

"Hey, just like you, Doc," Moist said cheerfully. Billy scoffed.

"No, my blog is cool," he said tersely. "Listen to this – 'February 27, 2006: _I did it! I finally nailed Shannon! That's one more I can cross off my list._' 'September 26, 2006: _Stole this girl from Marshall last night. Girls are so easy to win over with magic!_' – 'July 5, 2007: _For the holiday, I banged this broad in a tent and escaped in her truck._' – 'September 23, 2008: _Last night, I took home this really dim chick from the bar. Talk about easy_.' There's even an entry in here about he had to make a bracket of the top 64 women he'd slept with and screwed over to figure out who could possibly hate him the most."

"Wow," Moist drawled. "You know, that would explain why last night he asked me where the nearest bar was. I thought that was weird 'cause, you know, I thought he was you."

"Listen, I'm going to need your help," Billy said, putting on his work voice. "I've lost valuable time due to this whole fiasco. I have to get back to LA immediately, fix the Vortex, and get my plan off the ground before Bad Horse finds out how royally I've screwed up again."

"What do you need me to do?"

"You've got to get this Barney Stinson to work the machine from his end," Billy whispered, although he didn't really know why. "I don't exactly have enough money to hop a plane. I spent the only money I had on me on cab fare and this really dingy hostel. Man, New York is the dirtiest, most expensive place on earth. When I rule the world, it's gonna be the first to go."

"You can count on me, Doc," Moist said proudly with a lofty superhero-like pitch. "Hey, that big homeless shelter thing is going down today. You gonna go?"

"Are you kidding?" Billy asked, making a grotesque face that his sidekick could probably hear in his tone. "You think I want to sit through some bullshit ceremony and watch the whole town praise Captain Brainless for all his hard work? No thanks."

"Penny will be there," he pointed out.

"Yeah, well, I'd rather not watch her twirl her hair around a finger, giggle at his baritone, stroke his biceps, and fawn over him like he's some kind of saint for accomplishing the most pointless act of futile charity ever."

"Your choice," Moist said. "But it would probably mean a lot to her if you went."

"Tssh, I've got a better plan to win her heart."

---

"Moist!" Barney said leaning against the door frame, giddy for the chance to return to this charade. "I was just installing the jumper cables on my new gravity –"

"Drop the act, Stinson," Moist said impatiently, brushing past him and into the room. "We know who you really are."

"We?" Barney asked, pulling his fingers through the air to make quotes. He looked into the hallway to see if anyone came with the kid. Then he looked back at him and noticed the sweaty countenance. "Ah, _we_," he said slowly, almost sympathetically. "Say, Moist, how many people are in the room right now?"

"I'm talking about me and the doctor – the _real_ doctor."

Moist proceeded to explain the whole situation to Barney in as vague detail as possible while still conveying what happened and what Barney needed to do to put it right.

"You're trying to tell me I traveled through time and space all the way to California," Barney asked when he finished his story.

"Not through time," Moist said, regarding him as though he were a particularly dense third-grader trying to understand quantum mechanics. "But yes. Why, you don't believe me?"

"If I believed everything a stoner ever told me, I'd be telling you about the time a unicorn flew out of my –"

"You look like a wealthy businessman," Moist observed, nodding his head in a glance over Barney's expensive-looking suit. Barney's mouth turned up at the corner as he made a show of fixing his tie.

"Why, thank you."

"Let me see your phone," Moist said, holding out his hand with a sweaty palm face-up.

"No way," Barney said. "You'll probably just sell it in the streets for meth."

"This isn't New York," Moist said derisively, "and I'm not on drugs. I can prove it to you, if you just give me your phone."

Barney looked at him skeptically, but he pulled his iPhone out of his pocket and put it in the kid's hands.

"Careful!" Barney shrieked when it almost slipped out of his hands. "I scored 212.6 yards on Ninja Ropes on that thing." Moist struggled with the touch screen, constantly pulling his hands over his shirt to try and keep them dry. "And quit sweating all over it," Barney said.

"Here," Moist finally said, holding the phone out with a GPS application running. "You tell me where we are."

Barney narrowed eyebrows as he reached out and took the phone back. He wiped it on his pants and squinted down at the screen while he watched a map of the United States zero in on the west coast.

"What the..."

"Now do you believe me?" Moist asked impatiently. "I don't really feel like taking you out to prove it."

"How much did I _drink_ last night?" Barney whispered harshly, pushing a thumb into his temple.

"Are you going to do this or what?" Moist asked, pointing to the Vortex.

"Hell no," said Barney. "If what you're saying is true, then I'm not going anywhere."


End file.
